Powerball

Beginning tomorrow, you can forget about having to take the R2 to Wilmington, or the interstate to D.C. for that matter, to get your Powerball fix. That's because tomorrow - in time for Saturday's drawing - Pennsylvania becomes the latest state to join the super-size lottery cartel. Previously, the closest Powerball outlets were in Delaware and the District of Columbia. Powerball, known for its large jackpots (the biggest was $295.7 million in 1998), is a favorite of many Pennsylvanians, which contributed to the state's joining the multistate lottery last December.

Now we know what unlucky numbers look like. In last night's Powerball drawing, 7, 8, 33, 38 and 50 came up, along with a Powerball of 29, producing one of the stingiest payouts in a year. No one hit the jackpot. No one matched the first five numbers, so no one won the $1 million or $2 million prizes. In Pennsylvania, nobody even won the $10,000 or $40,000 prizes. The biggest prize was $200, and only 21 tickets won that. Nationwide, less than $2.6 million was won. In April, the average non-jackpot payout was almost $11 million.

FOUR LUCKY ticket-holders struck it rich last weekend, but here's the real winner of the $295 million Powerball binge: the government. Powerball is a multistate numbers racket that would be quashed by the Justice Department if it were privately run. Instead, the state bureaucrats behind these get-rich-quick schemes are allowed to ban outside competition - including private slots, phone betting, pull tabs and card rooms. When it comes to profiting from the mathematically challenged, lawmakers want the booty all for themselves.

Powerball's cash jackpot is up to $99 million after no one won it all Saturday night. Look at it this way - that's more money than Shrek Forever After raked in this weekend. So winning would be your own DreamWorks production. Nobody won $1 million, but three tickets - sold in Florida, Indiana and Wisconsin - won $200,000 each by matching the first five numbers, 19, 20, 40, 47 and 57, but not the Powerball of 29. As a result, Wednesday's annuity jackpot goes up to $190 million.

Powerball is stoked for another wild ride. The jackpot is up to a whopping $250 million - a quarter-billion dollars - for Wednesday's drawing, and if no one wins that one, expect the $300 million barrier to be broken for the third time this year. One further rollover, and it could be one for the game's record books. Powerball's biggest-ever annuity prize of $360 million was set in 2006, just two drawings after the jackpot hit just what it is now - $250 million. Now, with tickets at $2 apiece, money could come in faster - especially with competing Mega Millions at a comparatively measly $33 million.

July 29, 1998 | By Monica Yant, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Information from the Associated Press was used in this report

He may be unemployed and weighed down with a leg cast and crutches, but don't tell Jose Colon he should have stayed in his bed in North Philadelphia. There are the doctor's orders, and then there is the healing power of Powerball. "If I win $250 million, I can give him a bonus, a little tip," Colon said of his knee surgeon, who may very well have been in the same 4 1/2-hour line at the 7-Eleven store on Route 52 in Wilmington, where men in business suits and women checking their pagers squatted on milk crates next to trash bins in yesterday's hot midmorning sun. All for an 80 million-to-one chance of becoming filthy, filthy rich in the biggest lottery jackpot ever.

Powerball's finally into territory where jackpots soar. A couple more rollovers could put the game across the $300 million mark, seen by Powerball only once in nearly five years. The jackpot, building since late June, rose to $212 million on Saturday night, when no one hit all the numbers drawn - 19, 30, 48, 53 and 55, with a Powerball of 18. It's the year's third biggest jackpot, trailing the $336.4 million won in Rhode Island in February, and the $241 million snagged in Iowa in June.

What a year for Powerball. The cash jackpot for Saturday's drawing is the game's second biggest cash jackpot ever - $212.8 million. And the record of $224.6 million was just set in August. Because no one matched Wednesday night's numbers (8, 18, 24, 30 and 39, with a Powerball of 26), the annuity prize rose again, to $325 million. That's the fifth biggest in the game's history - and two of the others also came this year, including $337 million in that August drawing and $336 million in February.

The bigger they are, the faster they rise. The Powerball jackpot went up Saturday night by more than the next Mega Millions jackpot is worth. Mega Millions will be worth $19 million tomorrow, after no one hit all the numbers Friday night. Powerball's top prize will be $97 million Wednesday night - up by $27 million - after Saturday night's drawing failed to produce a winner. The cash payouts are estimated at $49.4 million for Powerball, $12.1 million for Mega Millions.

A Pennsylvania ticket came close to winning last night's $25 million Powerball jackpot. But, for the second time this summer, the only ticket with all the numbers was sold in Georgia, this time in Decatur. The June 29 jackpot of $77.1 million, hit in Tallapoosa, Ga., is still unclaimed, according to Powerball.com. The winning numbers drawn Wednesday night were 16, 41, 42, 50 and 59, with a Powerball of 5. Pennsylvania and Florida each sold a ticket now worth $200,000 for matching the first five numbers but not the Powerball.

I have a new financial plan. I'm playing the lottery. I don't know why I started, but it might have to do with the fact that I've been thinking about it for 45 years. Or the fact that some of my friends are retiring, and my retirement is now pushed back to 2022. Meaning that I will have to be 2022 years old to retire. And then I happened to be driving to New York. You can't drive anywhere without seeing those lighted-up billboards with astronomical numbers for the Powerball jackpot.

TOMS RIVER, N.J. - Hurricane Sandy wiped out the homes of a few members of a tight-knit group of 16 local vehicle service maintenance workers, who will now split the winnings of a New Jersey Powerball lottery ticket valued at $86,054,355 before taxes. That's roughly $3.87 million per member of the group, which dubbed itself Ocean's 16 - and enough for Darlene Riccio to buy a new home or two or three after the hurricane on Oct. 29 ravaged her rental apartment above a storefront in Brick.

New Jersey will soon welcome a new group of multimillionaires, after 16 workers in an Ocean County garage validate their lottery ticket from Wednesday's $448 million Powerball drawing as one of three jackpot-winning tickets in the country. And for the first time in two decades, the same state sold two winning jackpot tickets. The group - call it Ocean's 16? - work for the Ocean County Vehicle Maintenance Department. Speaking to reporters at an impromptu news conference Friday, department director Jim Pine said the employees asked to stay out of the spotlight until they claim the ticket next week in the state lottery's offices in Trenton.

Update: The winning ticket sold in Little Egg Harbor was bought by a group of 16 employees from the Ocean County Vehicle Maintenance Department, their boss confirmed Friday. They will not come foreward to claim the prize and reveal their identities until next week, said Jim Pine, the department's director. Earlier Story: Two of three winning tickets of the $448.4 million Powerball were sold in the Garden State, officials said, though as of Thursday night no one had come forward to claim the prizes.

IT APPEARS that Patricia Chandler hit the lottery and hightailed it out of Upper Darby. No one answered the door at Chandler's home on Wingate Road near Shirley last night - or a few weeks ago - when a Daily News reporter came knocking in search of the new millionaire. Lottery officials said yesterday that Chandler finally came forward to claim the June 22 $131.5 million annuity Powerball jackpot. Chandler opted for the $77.4 million cash lump sum. "She's probably already out of the neighborhood.

In the eight years that Gary Patel has been selling lottery tickets at his Point Breeze beer shop, no one had ever hit the big time. In fact, no one who ever played the Daily Number or the Cash 5 or even a lowly scratch-off ticket at Federal Beer had ever won anything above $10,000. Then, on Sunday, a representative from the Pennsylvania Lottery stopped by to perform what he called a routine check on Patel's lottery machine. And an hour later, Patel was fielding call after call from local news outlets: His shop on the corner of 15th and Federal Streets had sold the winning Powerball ticket, worth $131.5 million.

Widow, 84, gets Powerball prize TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - An 84-year-old Florida widow who bought her Powerball ticket after another customer let her get ahead in line came forward Wednesday to claim the biggest undivided lottery jackpot in history: $590 million. Gloria MacKenzie, a retiree from Maine and a mother of four who lives in a tin-roof house in Zephyrhills, where the lone winning ticket in the May 18 drawing was sold, took her prize in a lump sum of just over $370 million. After federal taxes, she is getting about $270 million, lottery officials said.

DES MOINES, Iowa - It's all about the odds. With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, someone is almost sure to win the game's highest jackpot during Saturday night's drawing, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars - and that's after taxes. The problem, of course, is those same odds just about guarantee the lucky person won't be you. (The winning numbers: 10, 13, 14, 22, 52 and Powerball 11.) The chances of winning the estimated $600 million prize remain astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million.

Powerball has morphed into a jackpot juggernaut - the big gorilla of the lottery world - topping $200 million for the third time this year. As in since January. The last time was just six weeks ago, when New Jersey's Pedro Quezada hit an annuity prize worth $338.3 million, and collected $211 million in cash. Before taxes, of course . Because no one hit all the numbers drawn Saturday night - 7, 12, 26, 36 and 40, with a Powerball of 17 - the jackpot rose to $222 million for the annuity, or $144.5 million for the lump sum payout.

One in a series of articles getting you ready for the U.S. Open at Merion, June 13-16. THE MOST influential person at this June's U.S. Open might not be three-time winner Tiger Woods or reigning Masters champion Adam Scott. Or USGA executive director Mike Davis, who is responsible for setting up Merion's East Course for, as the championship's website states, golf's toughest test. Or even NBC's Johnny Miller, whose jab-like observations figure to ruffle some egos. No, the one holding the keys at America's sixth-ranked course, which is hosting this flagship event for the first time in 32 years, is Matt Shaffer, director of golf course operations at the Ardmore institution.